“Mrs. Owen had her at Waupegan several years ago, and my wife and Marian met her there.  Mrs. Bassett was greatly impressed by her fine mind.  It seems to me I saw her, too, that summer; but of course she’s grown up since then.”

He glanced at Harwood as though for confirmation of these details, but Dan’s thoughts were elsewhere.  He was thinking of Sylvia speeding homeward, and of the little cottage beside the campus.  His subsequent meetings with Sylvia had caused a requickening of all the impressions of his visit to Professor Kelton, and he had been recalling that errand again to-day.  The old gentleman had given his answer with decision; Harwood recalled the crisp biting-off of the negative, and the Professor had lifted his head slightly as he spoke the word.  Dan remembered the peace of the cottage, the sweet scents of June blowing through the open windows; and he remembered Sylvia as she had opened the door, and their colloquy later, on the campus.

“You’d better go to Montgomery with Miss Garrison and report to Mrs. Owen for any service you may render her.  Does the old gentleman’s death leave the girl alone?”

“Quite so, I think.  She had lived with him nearly all her life.  The papers mentioned no other near relatives.”

“I’ll be in town a day or two.  You do what you can over there for Mrs. Owen.”

That evening, returning to the office to clear off his desk in preparation for his absence the next day, Dan found Bassett there.  This was unusual; Bassett rarely visited the office at night.  He had evidently been deeply occupied with his thoughts, for when Dan entered he was sitting before his closed desk with his hat on.  He nodded, and a few moments later passed through the library on his way out.

“Suppose I won’t see you to-morrow.  Well, I’m going to be in town a few days.  Take your time.”

* * * * *

Dan Harwood never doubted that he loved Sally Owen after that dark day of Sylvia’s home-coming.  From the time Sylvia stepped from the train till the moment when, late that same afternoon, just as the shadows were gathering, Andrew Kelton was buried with academic and military honors befitting his two-fold achievements, Mrs. Owen had shown the tenderness of the gentlest of mothers to the forlorn girl.  The scene at the grave sank deep into Dan’s memory—­the patriarchal figure of Dr. Wandless, with the faculty and undergraduates ranged behind him; the old minister’s voice lifted in a benediction that thrilled with a note of triumphant faith; and the hymn sung by the students at the end, boys’ voices, sweet and clear, floating off into the sunset.  And nothing in Dan’s life had ever moved him so much as when Mrs. Owen, standing beside Sylvia and representing in her gaunt figure the whole world of love and kindness, bent down at the very end and kissed the sobbing girl and led her away.

Harwood called on Mrs. Owen at the cottage in Buckeye Lane that evening.  She came down from Sylvia’s room and met him in the little library, which he found unchanged from the day of his visit five years before.